So this is going to be my first blog, so reader beware it probably won’t be very good. But, if you don’t mind watching someone ramble on about things that don’t matter, fail to put together a coherent thought, write one draft with no proof reading, and basically butcher the English language then read on fellow adventurer!

I think the rundown of what I’m hoping to do with this blog is that it will basically be just my daily thoughts on things. Not just stream related (well, mostly stream related) but anything else that sort of comes up depending on my mood.

A little background on what I’ve been doing. I’ve been a viewer of streams since the days of Justin.tv, XFire, and an avid watcher of a ton of different streamers since Twitch.tv launched. I think I had always wanted to try it out but kept making excuses as to why I didn’t (not a good enough computer, not good enough internet, no good mic, wasn’t good at a game, etc.) but basically never even tried. So i started the stream twitch.tv/legbracestv (totally a plug, go watch it!) at the beginning of September of 2015, and holy crap I FRIGGIN LOVED IT!!!

Don’t get me wrong, some days were terrible. Talking to yourself for 4hrs a day, with no one in chat, just in case someone happened to stop in, it’s hard to stay motivated. Many times I’d be talking a ton while gaming and my wife would come up all excited and ask “how many viewers!?”. Then I would look at that big fat zero and get a little embarrassed, putting so much energy into streaming and there was no one to watch it. When people did come in, many times it was just to tell me I sucked or I looked like a tool, but I guess you just gotta ignore the haters. Staying positive was probably the biggest hurdle, but I convinced myself that even the people who came in to say nasty things, they came in to watch ME! At the end of the day, a troll is still a viewer, so I pushed on because I loved doing it.

I think I sat at the 0-1 viewers for quite a few weeks (super demoralizing, almost gave up), till my wife asked if it would help if she watched while doing other things. I didn’t think it would make a big difference but then my roommates did the same, just kept my stream on in the background while they worked, like keeping the tv on while working out. This was actually the big turning point for me, as then I actually began to have real Twitch viewers come in, watch, and follow the channel!

When looking back at it, this is one of those situations of “The rich get richer”, where you need to have viewers to get more viewers. No one wants to go to a party with 0 people, well maybe some people but I could imagine most don’t, so it’s important getting a couple viewers in there to make it look like your party doesn’t suck so bad. How do you get over that 0-1 hump? Ask the people you have in your current network to watch.

You might be thinking “but I don’t HAVE a current network!”, but you totally do. Ask your Facebook friends to watch, ask your IRL friends, school-mates, and family to watch, basically just ask the people you know to check you out. This gets you over that 0-1 viewer hump, getting you away from the very bottom of the streams list.

I think this is kind of an issue with the way that Twitch lists channels, as they list them descending via current viewer count. This is fantastic for the bigger streamers, and viewers probably don’t care much about this, but as a smaller streamer you get buried regardless of the game you play, title you write, or production you put into the stream (overlay, music, camera, etc.).  Now I really have no idea how to fix this or make it better for everyone, but that really wasn’t the point of this blog post. It was pretty much just to let me bitch for a few paragraphs and get some of these thoughts out of my head.

I think the basic takeaways from this are: STAY DETERMINED ( #UNDERTALE ), stay positive, ask people you know to watch you to just get bodies in there, and if you like it keep doing it.

So i’d love to hear from fellow streamers, viewers, or basically anyone on your thoughts and/or experiences with any of this streaming stuff. Leave a comment below, and STAY DETERMINED!!! XD